Text and photos by Tom White
Started in 2015, Objectifs Centre’s Women in Film and Photography programme has been showcasing female practitioners for almost a decade, bringing international artists and visual documentarians to share their work in talks, screenings and exhibitions in Singapore.
As Objectifs’ director Emmeline Yong noted, in recent years this has become more than a showcase and has grown into a community of support. This is characteristic of the ethos of Objectifs and animates so much of what they do.
The 2023 edition’s theme is “Bodies” and features diverse approaches to the topic through the work of women from South, Southeast and East Asia.
Parallax Editor-in-Chief Tom White attended the artist tour of the exhibit to hear what they had to say about their work. Here is his report on the talks, and thoughts on the exhibition.
As you enter the Chapel Gallery for the photographic exhibition, Lisa Peh’s self-portraiture “Dear Lisa” adorns the wall in front of you. The repetitive image of herself, presented in full length profile, braiding the hair of another self-image, who does the same to another and so on, recalls figures in Egyptian art, stark and graphic. One Lisa breaks the pattern by turning to face us.
To the right of this, a myriad of images in cascading accordion folds show Peh’s head and shoulders, facing away from us, as her hands variously run through, manipulate, and cut her hair. In the corner can then be seen an image of this discarded hair.
Hair here is a metaphor for the conformity enforced on girls and young women — in this specific case, primary and secondary school children who are told how they can and cannot wear their hair, dress, and behave. As such, to style one’s hair in anything other than a braid becomes a liberating experience. Peh’s act of cycling through braiding and unbraiding, cutting, shaving and regrowing her hair is therefore a small but significant act of reclamation.
This is a familiar theme. Who hasn’t relished the opportunity to express their individuality through their appearance, and participate in a small rebellion against enforced conformity? However, the presentation of this work is an example of how a straightforward and simply understood idea — albeit one of immense personal significance to many — can be relayed with thoughtfulness, and even a touch of wry humour.
Opposite Peh’s work is portraiture from Vân-Nhi Nguyễn’s project “As You Grow Older”. This work is also the winner of the 2023 Aperture portfolio prize.
Set against a pale wallpaper, the framed images take on the feeling of portraits hung in the home, a point made explicit by the family photos hanging alongside them. Vân-Nhi Nguyễn’s documentary images are wonderfully evocative in and of themselves, fine examples of the tradition of portraiture, representing and dignifying their subjects without the caricature or performative exaggeration that can sometimes form part of such work, while also avoiding the banality that the deadpan portrait can occasionally fall into.
I am particularly struck by the image Ba Cô (Three Aunties), with their pose incongruous with their surroundings. Standing hands on hips and shoulders turned forward, three different registers of expression gaze out in harmony at the viewer. it is a formal stance in an domestic informal setting; a worn tiled floor, bicycles, washing. Not quite public, not quite private. What resonates here is both the artifice of the posed portrait, and the honesty of the documentary image.
In a recent article I learned that with Ba Cô (Three Aunties), Nguyen was drawing on a historical image of three Vietnamese women about to be executed by European settlers. Nguyễn is quoted as saying that “even though that image was taken by a white person, a settler, the women looked as though they owned the space.”
The scenes presented are undoubtedly domestic; they speak to the idea of intimacy, and lay claim to that space ,where they follow Vân-Nhi Nguyễn’s premise of identity and belonging, questioning what it means to be Vietnamese.
Vân-Nhi Nguyễn tells us that for many, the Vietnamese family consists of one mother, one father, and that it is good to have a son. She speaks about a feeling that national identity is shaped by cultural references from elsewhere. She elaborates further on her role as an artist, and the fact that in her school years she was taught little of Vietnamese art, with the history of art presented to her primarily as western painting and American photography.
This is indeed a problem that is increasingly acknowledged, and the move to “decolonise” has gathered momentum in recent years. Here is not the place to take a lengthy digression into this topic, and what is meant by the term, though a reckoning with this I would argue means broadening the cultural canon and the identity referents, rather than replacing them. It makes little sense to remove one dogmatic view of art history just to put another in its stead. Rewriting the history of culture as one of exchange and the rebalancing of which art and artists are represented and recognised within this framework would be enriching for us all.
Vân-Nhi Nguyễn is working firmly within the tradition of the documentary portrait, and yet, she shows us, in her words, a reality that is “out of the binary” and contains a desire “to be free and untethered from the burden of these past histories that we don’t always understand.”
History also forms a large part of the context to “Nothing Left to Call Home” by Taniya Sarkar and “Beudoh Dara” (Wakeup Woman) by Nisa Rizkya Andika.
Both of these artists reveal to us deeply personal stories set against a backdrop of territorial violence. This violence is not just between states, or the state and the insurgent, or born out of conflicts seeded during colonial history, but exists in a very real present day, against the individual, against the body. Taniya Sarkar writes:
“Nothing Left to Call Home is an ongoing long-term visual research project centred on the Indian state of West Bengal, and Bangladesh. It focuses on unearthing women’s narratives from the multifaceted and complex communal events since India’s partition and independence in 1947.”
Here then the partition of India and the deliberately disruptive unravelling of colonial control forms a rupture that becomes exploited in the name of nationalism, religion and patriarchal oppression. Independence cannot be a liberation if it involves the continued subjugation of others based upon their class, race or gender. While it is no small understatement to say that colonialism did much to construct and entrench these hierarchies, for the violence to continue to this day points to a deeper set of unresolved issues.
Forming part of an ambitious long term project, the images in “Nothing Left to Call Home” themselves are wonderfully rich in tone, colour and subject matter, allowing for a depth of emotion to arise as one views them. The aesthetic beauty of visual language has — often justifiably — been regarded as problematic. For me, these arguments have less to do with the photographic image per se, than the manner in which such images have been made and circulated as exotic representations of the “other.” The issue of who is speaking to and for whom, in the forum of art, media and culture plays an important role in how an image can be read. How we as practitioners work in relation to this is an important consideration. The richness of aesthetic experience is a powerful tool, and as David Levi Strauss has argued “Why can’t beauty be a call to action?”
Similarly, in “Beudoh Dara” by Nisa Rizkya Andika, the theme of social control, codified by political power dynamics, encroaches upon the everyday lives of women. In the Aceh province of Indonesia, the bringing in of syariah law in 2005 meant that women were subject to a dress code which included mandatory wearing of the hijab. This simple item of clothing has in recent years become loaded with significance as a point of contestation. What is often lost in the arguments around the hijab is the women’s right to choose. In some places women are subject to harassment, oppression and violence for not wearing it, while in others they are subject to the same treatment if they do choose to wear it. Perhaps this tells us more about attitudes towards women than it does anything else.
In this work, Nisa Rizkya Andika’s identity is obscured. The series of portraits of herself and her mother and sister are reduced to the hijab. Any expression of who they are, how they are feeling, and what they are thinking is invisible, subsumed into a political and religious ideology, to the point where non-conformity comes with a warning of danger. That this warning comes from Nisa Rizkya Andika’s own mother, who herself conforms partly out of fear, is something that begs the question of who is complicit, and how power finds its enforcers.
The removal of personal freedoms could also be said to be a theme of “Live-in (Mattress Provided)” by Geraldine Kang, who exhibits here partially constructed images of the beds in which domestic workers sleep. Photographed in Singapore, where domestic workers are exclusively foreign women, mandated to live in their employers’ homes, each image shows a mattress, or a bed in a space where all the domestic worker’s personal belongings, and they themselves are absent. In highlighting this space of sleep, Kang is asking us to confront ideas of personal space, of how women in particular roles are expected to live.
The photographs are accompanied by texts that relay Kang’s engagement with the domestic workers absent in the images. Kang admits that the inclusion of these texts grew out of a realisation that the images alone were not sparking the conversations she had hoped they would. This is of course, a common aspect of photography, often so full of ambiguity as to require contextualisation. That Kang’s texts here are anecdotal and often self-referential, points to the idea that part of the conversation being had is not just between the art and the viewer, but between the art and the artist. Kang also states that this is part of an ongoing engagement with this issue, so perhaps in resolving the points raised in the dialogue with the work, a definitive statement might emerge and provoke further discussion wherein these quiet, contemplative images may start to clamour.
That the domestic space is not always a happy one is a given, though sometimes the need to escape becomes overwhelming. Brindha Anantharaman left an abusive home with her first job and did not return until learning that her father was terminally ill, over a decade later. Despite this news, and compelled by a duty to reconnect “no matter how toxic” the environment, she could not stay. On her second leaving, an emotional floodgate opened, one which she struggled to articulate. Turning to photography to express herself, Anantharaman presents us here with “Jottings of an Unloved” a visual outpouring of images “cohesive not in genre but in character.” Finding herself “so numb that love wouldn’t register,” Anantharaman drew upon the power of images to connect and to communicate. This process in turn “saved her.”
The immense power of creative expression to process emotions is unquestionable. Primarily cathartic, when choosing to display this art publicly, we allow for space to connect with each other, to share experiences so that we might not just help ourselves through a process, but also others. Photography exists as a song we can all sing, whether in solidarity, or as something that gives voice to our own experiences. Anantharaman tells us that:
“I think I might have taken pictures whenever I visited a new and unknown landmark in my mind, unknowingly creating a map of the bewildering personal journey within myself.”
Photography of this nature allows us to embrace the ambiguous, and meanings that shift with mood; something beautiful becomes painful, melancholic, floating in space with a desire or a need to anchor ourselves. Deep emotion, whether love or trauma, anger or joy, can feel overwhelmingly vast and endless, leaving us unmoored. It is both frightening and liberating, and uncannily allows us — much like these images — to find beauty in a sea of pain.
“Sharps and Such” by Indian born Sunaina Bhalla addresses forms of pain through the experience of being diagnosed with and treated for breast cancer. In this work, Bhalla takes her mammograms and alters them with needle and thread. Bhalla utilises the embroidery needle as both something that “sews together and something that is sharp”. Sometimes sewing, other times scratching at the surface, she modifies these clinical images into ones that record her emotional journey through “acceptance, anger and moments lost.”
By first applying the suture threads, then marking the x-rays with the needle’s point, Bhalla conveys ownership of her experience with the disease through images that are disturbing for what they depict, yet beautiful for what they have been transformed into. Hung alongside these is a fabric imprinted with a pattern drawn from the ultrasound scans. Referring to this as representing the “shadows and fear” that remain, Bhalla’s work viscerally conveys the idea of the body as being an object we inhabit, both familiar and of ourselves, while foreign and something apart.
In many ways, this is how we view ourselves. We all have to find ways to come to terms with our bodies. For Low Pey Sien this meant challenging associations of nudity with “the negative connotations of lust, shame, and immorality” that came from her upbringing in a “traditional Chinese-Malaysian environment.” While by no means limited to this particular culture, finding a space in which to explore this freely is more difficult in some places than in others. For Low Pey Sien it came during a stay at an artists’ studio warehouse during the Covid-19 pandemic. Confronting learned feelings of shame with the desire to be naked in her series “The Future of (a Work that is Buried in a Hard Disk)” is not just a social transgression, but asks important questions about the baring of flesh. As Low Pey Sien herself notes, the boundary for this is gendered. She asks “why is my body shameful? When it is hot, why can my brothers just take off their clothes, but I have to think about it…”
The photographs themselves convey a sense of play. Partially obscured through shadow, soft focus and the blur of the shutter, they are neither particularly confrontational nor sexual, instead they contain the sublimated eros of being comfortable with one’s own nudity. Low Pey Sien states “I believe that the revealing of bare skin should be associated instead with universal humanity, beauty, and self-empowerment.”
As a counterpoint to these images, on display opposite is “Reborn” a video by Khin Thethtar Latt in which she sits partly dressed on a chair, face obscured by a bunch of flowers. Slowly she takes the flowers and places them into a false womb of clay that covers her midriff. This performance act representing a personal rebirth is also an act of defiance. As an artist from Myanmar, a country wracked by war and genocide, this expression of vitality takes on a political significance. Deeply melancholic, playful and even absurd, this performance and its video documentation takes aim at the violence of war, in which women are so often made victim, not just though conflict but also through such brutalities as kidnapping, enslavement and rape.
A poetic text accompanies the video, providing an eloquent context. It is a testament to surviving, to the hope of healing, reconciliation, peace, and even to love and care.
This is my performance to counter what is happening.
There are many things in which we aren’t given a choice.
We have to accept what we have.
I carry myself in my womb to be reborn again and again,
In order to leave all the pain and trauma which was born together with me.
Even though we can’t choose, I wish to have the chance to be reborn as who I would like to be.
This is the process of our nature as well.
It is the path through which life comes.
It is also the beginning of emotional trauma.
This is the beginning of the war.
This is a genocide.
This is racial discrimination.
This is also happiness.
This is also peace.
This is also love-kindness.
This is a unification.
It’s alive again.
It’s a healing process.
This is the cycle for everything.
In so many of these stories, individual experience is intertwined with imposed trauma, political both in the social and personal sense, often carried through generations. In all of these works there is a desire to change how women are viewed and treated in society that is often patriarchal, but also through the actions of other women, and of parents and close family members. The power dynamics are often so entrenched that we all perpetuate a status quo that too few challenge, because it feels easier to conform than to resist, to obey rather than question. We can all take advantage of socially allowed behaviour — sometimes mistakenly called “freedom” — at the expense of someone else, rather than risk those freedoms to stand in solidarity with others.
Emmeline tells us she wishes a program dedicated to women practitioners wasn’t needed, but given the themes explored in the work on show here, it is still clearly necessary.
About the artists
Brindha Anantharaman is an independent photographer from India. Her work tends to focus on personal narratives, gender issues, mental health, and the environment.
www.brindhaa.com
Sunaina Bhalla is an artist of Indian origin living in Singapore. Her work revolves around the repetitive and ritualistic nature of gestures and their traces. She explores the transformative effects of the deliberate infliction of pain on the human body during the curative processes that alleviate disease and decay.
www.sunainabhalla.com
Geraldine Kang is a Singaporean artist who uses a mixture of photography, writing, and objects to create installations that address topics such as family, community, mental illness, as well as the undercurrents and ambivalences of familiar places.
www.geraldinekang.info
Lisa Peh is a Singaporean visual artist who is intrigued by the relationship people have with their immediate surroundings. She primarily uses photography and the moving image to articulate this stream of interactions.
www.lisapeh.com
Low Pey Sien is a Malaysian artist who works in photography, film, and graphic media. Trained as an architect, her works observe the relationship between space, place, and people.
@playstesen
Nisa R.A. is a multidisciplinary artist who is interested in women’s issues and the intergenerational gap. She exhibits her work in various media such as visual art, photography and film.
@nisarizkya
Taniya Sarkar is a photographer based in Kolkata. She started documenting the aftermath of the pogrom as an independent photographer in 2020 after witnessing massive communal violence in Delhi. In the same year, she started researching communal violence that has been happening in her home state, West Bengal, since Indian Independence in 1947.
www.taniyasarkar.com
Khin Thethtar Latt is a multimedia artist from Yangon, Myanmar whose work explores the relationships between society, culture, gender, class, and politics. She sees herself as a storyteller, exploring and reflecting on her own roots and her own voice through the medium of visual language.
www.khinthethtarlatt.com
Vân-Nhi Nguyễn is a Vietnamese photographer and artist. Her work touches on cultural identities and social concerns via aesthetic research and theatrical staging, and in the process, proposes interpretations and challenges stereotypical assumptions.
www.vannhinguyen.com
About Objectifs
Established in 2003, Objectifs Centre is a visual arts space in Singapore that is dedicated to film and photography. objectifs.com.sg | Women In Film & Photography 2023 Exhibition | Bodies Education Resource Guide 2023
Tom White has spent the last twenty years working in the fields of art, media and academia. He is a visual communications educator, as well as a photographer in the journalism, editorial, advocacy and commercial spaces. He designed and delivered the Photojournalism & Documentary curriculum for Yale-NUS College in Singapore, and has also taught at the International Center of Photography and Columbia University in New York, in addition to instructing and facilitating various workshops and community-based social programs. Tom’s current research includes a focus on the potential of immersive and interactive documentary methods, and the continued importance of visual and media literacy. He’s been based in Singapore since 2011.
